Law / My Great GrandMother was born in Poland sometime before 1915 - any chance for Polish citizenship? [37]


what year did she leave Poland? As per wikipedia at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_nationality_law:

"Citizenship can generally be claimed only by descendants of Polish citizens who left Poland after the country became an independent state in 1918. Also, there can be no break in Polish citizenship between the emigrant ancestor and the descendant. If the applicant's ancestor lost Polish citizenship, the descendant did not inherit Polish citizenship through that ancestor."

Law / Opening a Polish Bank Account by a foreigner in Poland. Recommendations. [299]

M-bank are good but their website is only in Polish. PKO are probably the least foreigner friendly bank in Poland so wouldn't recommend them at all. I have heard good things about Millenium and Alior though.

Australia / HELP! Australian wanted to apply for Polish Passport via ancestory [51]

Yes, I went through this. My grandfather changed our surname back in the '50s and I changed mine back again a couple of years ago.

The problem is that in the UK (and I presume this is similar in Australia) is that a Deed Poll is validated only by a witness, and is not the result of a notary/court/USC office decision as is required in Poland. Therefore you have to show that the name change was done in accordance with the UK/Australian law to prove the Deed Poll is valid.

To do this you need to get an "apostille" for your document. In the UK this involves having your document certified by a solicitor, then getting an apostille from the British Foreign Commonwealth Office, then getting it all translated into Polish by a certified Polish translator.

I documented my case on my blog here if it's any help. british in poland/blog/2008/08/getting-a-british-deed-poll-recognised-in-poland/

I expect in Australia you will have a similar process.

Language / Funny/strange/deviant words in the Polish language [35]

Here's another strange thing I noticed in Polish - words such as "biznesmen" to mean a businessman. For some reason they adopted the plural "men" and not "man" which doesn't seem that logical to me. Same thing with "supermen" where you hear things such as "on jest supermenem".

I guess that the reason for this could be that "men" is the more natural sound in Polish, but then how comes they went with "man" in barman and barmanka?

Language / Funny/strange/deviant words in the Polish language [35]


and ironically "umbrella" which in English we use to shield from rain comes from the latin "umbella" meaning "shade, shadow".

Life / nasza-klasa.pl - If you looking for your classmates or friends in Poland [95]

you can't. But some people create a 2nd profile 'John Smith' profile and then browse other people's pages logged in under this fictional 2nd account.

Life / Are foreigners welcome in Poland? [267]


Out in the countryside it's rare to see non-Poles. Where I live I don't know of any other foreigners and have not met any other than the odd tourist. Therefore it's rare to hear people speaking English on a phone etc.. and I usually find someone will stare at me when I do.

Sometimes I find this a bit rude, but I put it down to bewilderment and ignore it.

Law / Poland - Temporary Residence card - Karta pobytu - required documents [142]


No, I think you are confusing two seperate processes - zameldowanie and karta pobytu.

To get your zameldowanie you need your landlord (either written consent to live at the address or him/her in person depending on what mood they are in at the office).

To get your karta pobytu you need to demonstrate you are self-sufficient which usually requires that you either show a recent bank statement with some money in it or demonstrate that you possess credit cards etc.. etc..

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

mafketis - veering off the thread a little - I know both your English and your Polish are red-hot. If I remember from some of your other posts you are a linguist by profession. What other languages do you speak and which one(s) are your native tongue(s)? Hope you don't mind me asking - just wondering...

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

I don't believe so, no.

Edit - just checked and according to wikipedia 'whom' is used as the objective form which could be either accusative or dative:
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whom
so in fact you are right.

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

No, other way around:

Who do you see? (acc)

To whom did you give the book? (dative).

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

English has the same 4 cases as German (nom, acc, gen, dat) but in English the dative is pretty much extinct apart from with words such as "whom".

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]


Whoops - fingers going faster than brain today. God knows where 'through' came from, doesn't even sound like 'throw' [or 'werfen' if we're in German mode... :-) ]

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

We should set up a polishforums.com German language appreciation society. It's already got 2 members :-)

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

Just to through my two grosze in, German is/was my second language (haven't spoken it for a while) and Polish I only started a few years ago as my 3rd.

It's true that in German you have to learn the gender when you learn the word, because in general you can't tell what gender it is from looking at it (apart from the -chen ones I mentioned).

In Polish you can correctly guess the gender 95% of the time, but you still need to learn the word's various grammatical forms because lots are irregular. For example you learn the word for hand - ręka, but then you have to know that it changes to different forms such as ręce, rąk etc..

Personally I think that German is MUCH easier for an English speaker to learn because it is much more closely related to English, the rules aren't as complicated (e.g. no perfective, imperfective, frequentive, determinate, inderterminate, no funny number stuff etc.. etc..) and in general there are fewer irregularities.

Also German makes strong use of compound nouns, so when you see a long word you don't know it's normally just comprised of 2 or 3 simpler words and you can guess the meaning - e.g. "autobahnbruecke" is made up of car, way (as in motorway or railway) and bridge - thus you can guess it means a fly-over.

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]


Because -chen (where the proceding vowel has an umlaut) is a diminutive ending that is neuter in gender. Thus all words ending with umlaut + chen are neuter.

Life / Polish Organizational Skills [83]


wow! I am amazed they even have them. The only place I have ever seen one in action in Poland was at Ikea in Kraków, very surprised to see the post office has got them. So it looks like progress is slowly being made...!

Law / Poland - Temporary Residence card - Karta pobytu - required documents [142]


Personally I agree. I think the UK has gone too far in publishing council leaflets in 20 different languages...


I don't think there is normally an interview, but I had an extra complication in that I also have (currently still unconfirmed) Polish citizenship. I was summoned to Krakow for an interview about it.

Law / Poland - Temporary Residence card - Karta pobytu - required documents [142]


In fact they are not allowed to speak English during the interview. When I had my karta pobytu interview he asked if I was OK to conduct it in Polish. I half-joked that his English was probably better than my Polish so I don't mind if he wants to talk in English. He said that he is required to conduct the interview and all formalities in Polish anyway and that if necessary a translator is required and it's my responsibility.

Law / Polish EU Drivers Licence - can I get one the easy way (by paying for it)? [185]


No, you're wrong. If you get banned in one country (be it UK, Poland or Bulgaria) you are still banned even if you come back with a licence from a different country. Changing your licence doesn't fix the problem that you are banned....

Real Estate / House prices in Poland to drop more or rise again? [228]

Maybe I should have been clearer - informed people will have an idea about the direction prices will head in, but I don't believe anyone knows the timing.

For example a lot of people had been saying prices would drop in the UK for years, so the fact that they have is no suprise, but knowing when the drop would occur is a little harder to guess.

The problem is that things such as currency prices, property prices or the stock market are greatly affected by investor confidence, and because that is a human emotion it is unpredictable. Yes there are general trends, but there are also a lot of unpredictabilities involved too.

What I am saying is that long-term it's not too hard to make predictions but short term, such as 6 - 12 months I am cynical that anyone can make a good prediction.

Real Estate / House prices in Poland to drop more or rise again? [228]


typos I can restrain myself. Big ones like that from native speakers I'm afraid I can't help myself :-)

Real Estate / House prices in Poland to drop more or rise again? [228]


True, but don't forget there is the mentality that prices rise on everything when the euro arrives, which is why historically foreigners have chosen to invest in countries pre-euro. If this is happening/will happen in Poland then the increased demand may affect prices [plus I think you mean "they're" not "there"].

But this thread is pretty meaningless anyway. In general nobody knows whether prices will go up, down or sideways. Everybody is guessing, some make better guesses than others and some get lucky.

Law / How to register a foreign Non-EU car in Poland? [25]

you say a UK/Japanese car.

so just to check first of all - is this vehicle left hand drive or right hand drive?

Food / Confusion over flour names in Poland [46]

actually I just looked it up:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour

Apparently it's normal flour that has had 'chemical leavening agents' (whatever that is!?) premixed in to it which as far as I can see means some salt and baking powder.

Food / Confusion over flour names in Poland [46]

so forgive me for asking a stuipd question then - what is the difference between plain and self-raising flour?

Life / GPS Satellite Navigation systems for driving in Poland [22]

I have a TomTom that's 2 years old with the European map.

It was 100% accurate when I drove from London all the way to the Polish/German border and then it was useless.

They have built/changed so many roads so fast in the last few years that the maps are very quickly out of date.

Also, small un-made roads (really just dirt tracks) are often marked as roads suitable for cars and they're not. I have been lead down a few dead-ends too.

I don't know if the latest maps are any better, I haven't tried them...

Life / nasza-klasa.pl - If you looking for your classmates or friends in Poland [95]

In the UK the most popular equivalent is called friendsreunited.co.uk - Friends Reunited. I understand that Nasza Klasa is a relatively recent phenomenon in Poland, where as we had FR in the UK years ago (and I'm kicking myself for not thinking about ripping off their idea and doing it myself in Poland ages ago).